The Stillness Between
by Erinya
Summary: Azkadellia has always counted her victories in terms of things she has not done. Gen, complete.


**Disclaimer**: Not mine.  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Summary**: Azkadellia has always counted her victories in terms of things she has not done. Gen. Short, a little over 700 words.  
**Note**: My thanks to**azkadellia01** at **tinmanfans** on LJ for providing the wording of the prophecy when I couldn't remember it. I've also adopted the name Lurline for the Queen and Fiyero as Ambrose's surname, as I've seen and liked this trend in fanon.

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**The Stillness Between**

_The majestic queen of the O.Z.  
had two lovely daughters she.  
One to darkness, she be drawn,  
and one to light, she be shown.  
Double eclipse, it is foreseen,  
Light meets dark in the stillness between,  
but only one and one alone  
shall hold the emerald and take the throne._

_Take my hand, Az. Just take my hand._

_I won't let go. I should never have let go._

Between darkness and the world, Azkadellia stood still.

Against the alien will that gripped her, body and mind, she had fought her small battles in not-doing, in omissions. In towns left unvisited. In homes left standing. In problems and complications.

The Witch would have killed Lurline, the day of the coup; her hatred for the Queen seared through the Sorceress's brain and made her insides twist, tight and sick. Azkadellia didn't fight the hate. She never fought; fighting only made it worse. She just delayed. Put her mother away for safekeeping, blasted the bubble-cell's landscape enough to please the whispers. Reminded herself-that-was-not of the emerald, and what the Queen might know.

She visited the island in miniature as often as she dared. Lurline faced her like a stranger, all careful composure and tightly-reined fear. Fragile though the Queen appeared, face lined and hair turned suddenly gray the day of DG's death, her enduring calm astonished Azkadellia, left her jealous and shaking with rage. But her mother never raised a hand against her, expressed only disappointment and quiet reproof for all of the Sorceress's threats and wheedling.

Weakness, sneered the Witch. In the blood; like mother, like daughters. All that power gone to waste. Azkadellia never fought the dark. Her little sister had run away from it. What made her think that Lurline would challenge it in her only living child?

The Sorceress knew she was right. The Witch in her was stronger than Lurline's daughter. Stronger than love, stronger than fear, stronger than despair.

She could not stop herself from ordering her alchemists to take Ambrose's brain. She could only convince the malicious hunger gnawing at her core that it would be far crueler to keep him alive, knowing what he had been. Worse than death, for a man like Ambrose Fiyero to lose that brilliant, whip-sharp intellect and the inventive genius that made thaumaturgical engineering a household term in the O.Z.

It was worse. But it was something she had not done. She had not killed him. The man called Glitch still danced; he still laughed. Broken, but not gone. It was something.

There was a Tin Man, once, who did not flinch and looked her in the eye, and the stillness in his face matched hers. Blue eyes, clear like ice. Defiance like steel, shining bright and almost blinding.

She didn't kill him, though she'd thought about it.

She was seventeen.

The Witch sent Zero after him, later, ex-Tin Man turned Longcoat to catch ex-Tin Man turned resistor. After the thing was done, the Sorceress slipped that memory coin into the holotank over and over again. The Witch smiled as he struggled helplessly against the men who held him, as his little boy fell to the ground and his wife wept, watched his face to see his heart break. But Azkadellia, holding carefully still, deep within the Witch's sadistic glee, watched him fight, saw how he snarled like a gyrlion until they shut him into the stasis suit, beaten and bloodied. He never stopped fighting.

She dreamed herself in that suit, cold metal holding her still, holding her back, watching herself lose that fight, over and over. Sometimes the child who fell was her sister. Sometimes the woman who wept had lavender eyes. Sometimes she cursed Zero and the Longcoats and herself right along with the Tin Man, helpless to stop them as if she stood by his side. Sometimes she saw it all through his eyes, half-blinded by blood and tears; met the terrified gazes of his wife and son, felt the blows in her own belly, tasted warm copper fill her mouth and heard the suit clang shut upon her.

The Witch knew her dreams, and knew her thoughts. She knew what Azkadellia was. But she didn't know what it meant, what the O.Z. had shown her for fifteen long annuals. Not until now.

Like mother, like daughter, like sister. In the blood.

At last the stillness stirred, and reached out her hand to the light.


End file.
